I got it to work fine now, the dir's keep getting created with the wrong CHMOD.
I use this code and I get random CHMOD's on the creation. I have even had to contact my hosting company to delete messed up dirs for me becuase they CHMOD with owner having crap for privs.
$title = $_POST['title'];
$dir = "/home/XXX/public_html/XXX/XXX/".$title;
//if no directory exists then create one, else count how many files in directory
if (!file_exists($dir)){ mkdir($dir, 0755); } else { if(file_exists($dir) && is_dir($dir)){
$count = 0;
$handle=opendir($dir);
while (($check = readdir($handle))!== false){ if ($check != "." && $check != "..") { $count++; }}}